


The Broken Princess

by chronicAngel



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Burns, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Misplaced Anger, POV Third Person, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 00:45:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8230403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: Azula has never gone this far before.





	

When he first stumbles upon the scene, he can't even process what's in front of him. A vanity sits in the corner of the room, resting in the same place that it has since he was thirteen, and he remembers the almost golden wood being coated in a layer of dust from where it was stored in the same room as all of the other abandoned reminders of his mother when she disappeared. Azula didn't inherit it until she was eleven because their father didn't trust her to take care of the wood properly, and that was one of the few times Zuko suspected his father did actually care for his mother, in his own twisted way. The glass of the mirror is shattered, light reflecting off of the pieces scattered around the floor, and it's easy to tell what happened by the blood on his sister's knuckles.

She isn't quite dead, not when he finds her, but he can tell that she's not far from it and that no one will get here fast enough to save her. His immediate instinct upon seeing her crumpled up on the floor, a puddle of blood around each of her wrists and her long hair fanned out around her, is to straighten, to be formal with his sister as if this is a political meeting and she called him here. He can hear her shaky breaths, coming in and out at a speed that reminds him of a cornered rabbit monkey, and it almost sounds to him like Azula is crying even as he sits down in front of her and she is made aware of the fact that there's someone here who can see and hear her. "Azula..." She doesn't say anything back to him, doesn't even look up when he addresses her.

"What happened, Azula?" His voice is calm and gentle, as if he is trying to comfort her or at least keep her from getting any worse, and he thinks that he is. He thinks that he really is trying to be nice and gentle with his sister, even if that is something the two of them have not been to one another in almost a decade.

A large piece of glass that is dripping with blood and resting by one of her hands is quickly launched at his head, with an angry grunt from Azula accompanying its projection, but it is not hard for him to move out of the way. She didn't even look up to throw it, he notices, and her arm is shaking as she pushes herself onto her hands and knees. "Azula, please, just talk to me! Let me help you!" He sounds angry with her because she just won't let him in.

"Leave me alone, brother!" She swipes at his face with the small amount of fire left in her body, and it startles him into shooting off his own fire at her, burning her hand and wrist and he doesn't even realize he's doing it until she screams and falls and cradles her bloody and burnt hand to her chest. The blood coming from her wrist doesn't startle him nearly as much as the fact that his own sister still won't look at him; he hasn't seen her face this entire interaction and it terrifies him. He reaches out to her, stuttering out an apology, but she screams angrily again and backs away.

He stays where he is across from her, wide-eyed and horrified that even in her last moments he hurt her, because he hurts _everyone._

He can tell when she fades away; her breathing has stopped and her bloody hands and wrists fall to the floor. Her last words to him were to leave her alone.

In terror, he doesn't touch her body, staring at her pale form as if any second she'll stand up and start launching lightning bolts at his head like she would have done just a short few years ago, when the world was still at war with itself. He stares at her chest as if he expects it to rise and fall, like she's only faking her death. There's a stinging sensation in his chest and he thinks that it might be guilt, for letting her die or for hurting her, or anger, because how _dare_ she let such a prodigy die, how _dare_ she kill his sister. It doesn't take him very long to realize that it's grieving.

Grieving is familiar to him. When he was eleven and they lost their mother, when he was still certain that she was dead, he went through weeks of hardly being able to eat, doing nothing but crying in his room while Azula called him weak for it. When he was thirteen and he was banished, he mourned the loss of his honor, launching himself into plotting to find the Avatar, who had been missing for nearly a hundred years while the world fought a war that he was sure at the time the Fire Nation would win. When he was sixteen, he could think of nothing but his betrayal of his uncle to restore what he thought would be honor, but what he is now sure was just a principle which had been precedent for him by his family-- the family that didn't really matter, that is. He knows grieving and _this_ , this is hard for him to process.

Zuko has never cared for his sister. When they were small children, they used to play games and practice their firebending together, like normal siblings, but as their parents continued to pick favorites, it was hard for him and his sister to stay close. She has been cruel to him as long as he can remember and yet he continues to miss her as she has let herself go.

He doesn't understand it when the tears start to well up, and even though he knows she's dead, he screams for help. He screams at the top of his lungs as if one of the doctors at the nearest hospital will hear him, as if a Water Tribe healer will hear him and bring her back. He supposes that Azula has been dead for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> In Avatar Season 3, we see that Azula has gone pretty crazy by the end, but it's left pretty ambiguous at the end of the show what they did with her after everything that went down. Of course I immediately launched myself into different theories and ideas about what might have happened, and I think my favorite was Zuko taking her in and trying to take care of her because as awkward and rotten as their relationship is, I think that they did genuinely care about each other in their own, separate, horribly inefficient ways. Azula does care about Zuko, sort of, and just doesn't people very well, and Zuko does care about Azula, sort of, and just has a bitterness against his family. So I have no trouble believing that after the war, he would totally take her in. That said, this fic was sort of difficult for me to write because I wasn't sure how to properly convey Zuko's reaction to this sort of situation, due to a whole lot of factors. I imagine it is probably out of character, but I tried my best and I hope to do these characters better in the future.


End file.
